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Intelligent Evolution?

Southwind17 said:
Focus on the end product, not the designer. Place yourself in the museum.
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That's the essential problem with your analogy; you are ignoring the designer for the end product. Intelligent Design is all about the designer. The point of the junkyard/tornado/747 "analogy" is that a 747 is far too complex come about through the purposeless shuffling of scrap metal that the tornado performs, meaning that it has to have been intelligently designed with a specific purpose in mind. It is the replacement of the purposeless agent with a purposeful agent, according to ID proponents, the observed complexity of the world possible.
 
What I meant was that we are currently the only intelligences that we know about. Any other intelligence could also create intelligent design.
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Again this is an unhelpful tautology.

As I said earlier ALL abstractions lie. I am, therefore, not telling you that you are wrong, I am only telling you that your unwillingness to be flexible in your perspective means you will be unable to appreciate the problem from a different perspective: namely one where you disconnect the instigator of a process from the process.

After all, does it really matter how intelligent you or I am if we are faced with some problem where we can only solve it in a dumb way?

Evolutionary algorithms are closer to, but not completely, like evolution, as the goal is predefined
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The ease as to which you can identify a goal does not affect the process. I don't want to rehash previous conversations too much but I don't have to define an explict goal in an evolutionary computational simulation. I can simply create a world model and see what happens naturally - in that world.

All a goal does is constrain the system so that implicit goals cannot arise.

Static vs dynamic goals.
 
Southwind17 said:
I thought ID proponents were, but maybe we need to consider this further.
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Found a reference:

Many people think that questioning Darwinian evolution must be equivalent
to espousing creationism. As commonly understood, creationism involves belief in an earth formed only about ten thousand years ago, an nterpretation of the Bible that is still very popular. For the record, I have no reason to doubt that the universe is the billions of years old that physicists say it is. Further, I find the idea of common descent (that all organisms share a common ancestor) fairly convincing, and have no particular reason to doubt it. I greatly respect the work of my colleagues who study the development and behavior of organisms within an evolutionary framework, and I think that evolutinoary biologists have contributed enormously to our understanding of the world. Although Darwin's mechanism--natural selection working on variation--might explain many things, however, I do not believe it explains molecular life. I also do not think it surprising that the new science of the very small might change the way we view the less small." ~ Michael J. Behe, Darwin's Black Box, (New
York: The Free Press, 1996), p. 7
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"Further, I find the idea of common descent (that all organisms share a common ancestor) fairly convincing, and have no particular reason to doubt it."
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It is great, he can retreat whenever he fells like it...
 
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cyborg said:
Again this is an unhelpful tautology.

As I said earlier ALL abstractions lie. I am, therefore, not telling you that you are wrong, I am only telling you that your unwillingness to be flexible in your perspective means you will be unable to appreciate the problem from a different perspective: namely one where you disconnect the instigator of a process from the process.

After all, does it really matter how intelligent you or I am if we are faced with some problem where we can only solve it in a dumb way?
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If you are discussing the process, then how the process works is important, indeed is the point of the discussion.

I agree it is a tautology, but it is important if you are discussing an intelligent designer

If I define the fitness criteria, then I am acting almost exactly as "The Intelligent Designer Who Works Through Evolution, His Wonders To Perform".

I believe that you live in England, so have you come across (the more reasonable) CofE people who state this as how they reconcile evolution and God? I have many times, starting with an RE teacher at school.

(Actually given that they are CofE, and they actually believe in God, I suppose that puts them in the Extreme believer wing... Could any other denominations have serving bishops not believing in the resurrection -"I dont believe in any of that, I'm CofE")

If I had to have a religious belif I would choose CofE


cyborg said:
If it is not deliberate when DNA can't replicate properly because of a chemical malfunction arising from perfectly consistent physical laws then it's not deliberate when a neuron firing causes someone to try some design and not another.

Always keep in mind that when you say things like, "this is by purpose of man," and "this is not by purpose of man," that man is still natural. It is, and can only be, a helpful way of understanding the world.

All abstractions lie.
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Are you saying that the PC evolved because we evolved, so it is ultimately the product of evolution?

Plese let's keep off the free will debate*. For the purpose of my points I am saying that whether it is an illusion or not, self-aware beings think they have intent, and they can think they intend to attempt to solve design problems with a deliberate solution, as opposed to a pseudorandom evolutionary approach.

*mainly because the number of qualifying sub-clauses gets too ugly to read.
The ease as to which you can identify a goal does not affect the process. I don't want to rehash previous conversations too much but I don't have to define an explict goal in an evolutionary computational simulation. I can simply create a world model and see what happens naturally - in that world.

All a goal does is constrain the system so that implicit goals cannot arise.

Static vs dynamic goals.
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It is not the identification of the goal, but the setting of the goal.

In the typical evolutionary algorithms, an algorithm will determine the fittest component. This is performed algorithmically against the desired criteria. In real life, there is no algorithmic fitness criteria.

It is possible to conceive of actual evolution in machines, but not to impliment it yet; you need imperfect self-replication, and then it would happen automatically.
 
If you are discussing the process, then how the process works is important, indeed is the point of the discussion.
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Yes, but simply saying, "the process is intelligent because an intelligent agent instigated it," says NOTHING about the process itself!

If I define the fitness criteria, then I am acting almost exactly as "The Intelligent Designer Who Works Through Evolution, His Wonders To Perform".
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Yes, you are. But then words are just words and how you choose to describe something has no impact on what it is. People who want to describe things in terms of gods are going to do so anyway.

I believe that you live in England, so have you come across (the more reasonable) CofE people who state this as how they reconcile evolution and God?
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If they are going to insist on doing so the very least one should expect is that they are at least correct about what it is they are talking about.

You see, it's perfectly correct to say this if you insist axiomatically that a god was involved. Of course justifying the introduction of that axiom when it is impotent in producing any extra behaviour is another matter altogether.

For an analogy it's like saying defining the + operator and the natural numbers is sufficient to describe addition but I really like the idea of 4 + 6 = 10 because it's so beautiful so I will add that as a special axiom.

Does bugger all of course but it's perfectly legal logically.

Are you saying that the PC evolved because we evolved, so it is ultimately the product of evolution?
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No. I'm saying that's a valid interpretation. It's not, perhaps, a helpful one in certain contexts.

Hell, it took long enough for supposedly intelligent people to simply recognise the enormous potential of computers after Babbage had already prototyped one. Sure, it was amazing to those he demonstrated it to but there was absolutely no connect in their minds between it and what it represented in what has unfolded in the information age we live in.

For the purpose of my points I am saying that whether it is an illusion or not, self-aware beings think they have intent, and they can think they intend to attempt to solve design problems with a deliberate solution, as opposed to a pseudorandom evolutionary approach.
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Yes. And it's a lie. A useful one, but still a lie all the same.

(If you want absolute truth you'll need an Oracle I'm afraid: mathematics can't give it and these abstractions we are discussing, ultimately, are mathematical and can be described identically in two seemingly diametric ways).

It is not the identification of the goal, but the setting of the goal.
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But jimbob, all I did instead of having a simple, easy to identify selection function is that I extended it into something we'd recognise as a simulation. But the simulation, ultimately, is still just a function in the computer.

At the end of the day all the evolutionary algorithm knows is that it gets some inputs and it has some outputs. The processing that occurs outside this it is totally unaware of.

you need imperfect self-replication, and then it would happen automatically.
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Self-replication is IRRELEVANT. If you want to insist that copying done by a machine that is not entangled with the machine being copied is not equivalent then, ultimately, you will have to come to the ludicrous conclusion that because atoms don't split cells don't really 'self' reproduce either. What happens in a cell is lots of tiny machines work on the inside to produce a new copy. If you want to insist that doing it from the outside makes the process fundamentally different then go ahead. It's silly but whatever.

The cell, is, after all just an abstraction for a collection of smaller machines working together.

Abstractions lie.
 
Henners said:
...and yet my writing is still there, and the sword is slicing through empty space.
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And the world moves on deterred by neither.

I think you should lay off the cartoons. At least the good Doctor managed to connect with something.
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I've long wondered about that. Did the good Doctor really risk a foot-injury, or did he grab Boswell by the neck and bang his head against the church wall? We only have one reporter to go on (Boswell), Doctor Johnson was notoriously irascible, and Boswell must have been a right pain at times.

I guess we'll never know.
 
There is another difference. The analogy to the "fossil record". If one took the first aeroplane, and had attempted to use an evolutionary algorithm to develop it, the history of models produces would not look as they did. Some designs did have "irriducible complexity" comparetd to their predecessors. This is not a problem for the theory of evolution, because aircraft did have intelligent designers, but it is a problem for the use of aircraft as an analogy, if arguing against intelligent design.

In fact almost anywhere where histories say something along the lines of "this was a revolutionary design" or "ambitious design" is not simply an incremental change.

As I was a British schoolboy, I'll stick with what I can remember. The Hawker Hurrican IID was used in the ground attack role, with GBFO guns (2x40mm) under its wings. THis wasn't a "mutation" but using available airframes in a role when they had become outclassed as fighters.

Why did families of airliners from the same company look similar and then suddenly start sprouting jet encgines. Because designers reused components, and individual deigners had their own "signature" in the style of design. So far so good for the incremental change. Then suddenly they all start sprouting jet engines, it is analogous to a crocodile suddenly sprouting gills, or a temperate lizard having a full set of mamalian fur (possible with genetic modification, but not evolution).
 
Humans emit fossil fuels in the air-- are they "designing" a warmer world? You are confusing things that people do with purposeful, design-- but designs evolve by people going around doing what people do-- the "design" of the internet, of cities, of stories, of households--most inputs are just putting one foot in front of the other type inputs--not long range thinking... because we don't have enough information yet-- ant colonies and bee hives get built without anyone being in charge of the "design"-- it's just an algorithm encoded in the genes... and people flying in airplanes don't need to know how to make them and people designing them don't ever have to put one together and people putting them together, don't have to have a clue about anything except the part they are putting together or the factory machinery they operate.

It's the design itself that evolves through time like a genome.

And just as a sketch or an outline is not a photo or the entire story-- so is an analogy or a model not expected to be identical in every way. The analogy simplifies understanding to the majority of people. The few who don't get it, don't seem to be particularly adept at explaining natural selection and how it produces incremental changes over time and multiplies the best designs in accordance with their "fitness" in the environment they find themselves in.
 
jimbob said:
If one took the first aeroplane, and had attempted to use an evolutionary algorithm to develop it, the history of models produces would not look as they did. Some designs did have "irriducible complexity" comparetd to their predecessors. This is not a problem for the theory of evolution, because aircraft did have intelligent designers, but it is a problem for the use of aircraft as an analogy, if arguing against intelligent design.
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I didn't mean for the scenario described in the OP, and as subsequently developed, to be taken to apply to all conceivable instances, but notwithstanding that you're reasoning is wrong. You're looking at the aeroplane as a holistic entity. Admittedly, the introduction of the jet engine to aircraft cannot be considered an incremental change as it didn't mutate from the internal combustion engine (actually, notwithstanding the machanics, you'd probably still find many links between the materials used and certain components that do demonstrate some incremental change). But look at the jet engine in isolation, and consider its evolution (sorry, development ;)) over time. At the end of the day, you cannot deny the fact that every aeroplane, jet engine, computer, etc. some time ago sat idly in the ground manifesting itself as metal ore, oil, mineral, etc. I wonder why aeroplanes didn't suddenly just sprout up out of the ground! I wonder why we cannot yet send a manned mission to Mars, but that we almost certainly will relatively soon! Why can't we simply 'leapfrog' with technology?

jimbob said:
In fact almost anywhere where histories say something along the lines of "this was a revolutionary design" or "ambitious design" is not simply an incremental change.
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I think I've already offered a view as to how design with forethought is simply natural evolution short-circuited. Those 'revolutionary' and 'ambitious' designs might well have occurred purely through incremental change, had the designer been unambitious and extremely patient, not to mention completely uncommercial.
 
Some designs did have "irriducible complexity" comparetd to their predecessors.
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There is no such thing as irreducible complexity - merely steeper gradients to move from one point in a design space to another.

Then suddenly they all start sprouting jet engines,
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And yet we have sea creatures that use the principle of turbulent flow as a propulsion mechanism.

it is analogous to a crocodile suddenly sprouting gills, or a temperate lizard having a full set of mamalian fur (possible with genetic modification, but not evolution).
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I'm afraid you're simply wrong jimbob - a steeper gradient can be overcome in a shorter time with an increase in the severity of mutation.

That it doesn't happen in nature is NOT a fundamental restraint on the abstract concept. It is an observation about the mutation rates in nature.
 
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